Brazil in Tight Race with Mexico to Head WTO (Financial Times)
Senior Fellow Kimberley Ann Elliott is quoted in the Financial Times on the future of the World Trade Organization with new Latin American leadership.
Roberto Azevêdo of Brazil and Herminio Blanco of Mexico are scrambling to secure last minute votes in a tight race to become the next head of the troubled World Trade Organisation.
The stakes are high. After stalled efforts to clinch a sweeping multilateral trade agreement in the decade-old Doha round, the WTO is seeking to revive its mission – and its relevancy – ahead of a big ministerial gathering in Bali in December.
Mr Blanco, a former Mexican trade minister, last week wrote in the FT’s beyondbrics blog that the current impasse in multilateral trade talks is “no longer an option”. “The WTO is as relevant as its member countries want it to be. It is now time for them to decide where they want this organisation to go and what role it should play in the years to come.”
Mr Blanco and Mr Azevêdo, the Brazilian ambassador to the WTO, are both confident of prevailing in the final round of voting this week to become the first Latin American director-general of the global trade body, replacing French incumbent Pascal Lamy in September.
On Tuesday the 159 member countries are expected secretly to deliver their preferences to the Geneva-based body in an opaque process that aims to deliver a winner by consensus.
The Latin American nations backing their respective candidates have each been mustering their diplomatic muscle, with both countries seeing a win as boosting their status in the global economic hierarchy.
“My fear is that this could be a continuation of the north-south split, and whether whoever [wins] is going to be able to pull the membership together and in some way bridge that divide,” says Kim Elliott, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington.
